BetterSims News

Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a great day.

I created this post for all updates and news about my progress with the BetterSims mod. This will serve as a sort of diary of all the fixes, reported errors and conflicts.

04/15/2021

I reviewed a series of issues reported about possible conflicts with Mods from SimRealist with the help of them. No mod conflicts were found, aside from isolated events. This helped me rule out all possible conflicts with their mods. The specific mods tested were SNB, SNB Bills, SNB Financial center and Private Practice, But all other mods from them wont have any conflict as far as we know.

04/17/2021

My Plans
I've been organizing and planning next update, So far I have this important things I'll be working on:

• Fix City living aspirations to match the new style.
• Check I'm a new sim buff that makes your sims' preferences change overtime.
• Check Re-thinking *activity* Buffs hat makes your sims' preferences change overtime and make them invisible. These buffs are not needed anymore After Notifications were added.
• Improve the test that make your sims earn a preference. (Finding the things your sim loves wont be as hard anymore)
• Crete the aspirations for the second Flavor
• Start working on whims overhaul (This will add a lot to secondary aspirations)
• Start working on Trait picker interactions, to add more customization options like remove or add activity preferences and others.

04/24/2021

So far the next objectives were already met.

• Fixed City Living Aspirations
• Improve the preferences and life choices system(this one took quite some time)
• Added back whims to  some aspirations and improved some whims, so far just aspirations and secondary aspirations whims. I need to collect a lot of info and make new whims  to fully improve the whims system so I'll be adding to whims little by little with each update.
• Already planned out all aspirations for the Vanilla flavor, which will follow the original game's style(still need to build it)
• I fixed several text and image errors

things left to do befo next update:

• Build and organize vanilla flavor of the mod
• check the I'm a new sim buff
• Check the Makeover life choices
• check re-thinking  buffs( these ones change your sims preferences over time)
• check figure it out milestone 2 (it started throwing LE's again) I might need to re build it to make sure it works just fine.

05/02/2021

Last update was very hard for me because a lot of unexpected things happened. Also had some personal issues  but managed to make it work in the end. It taught me that I need to be more cautious and realistic with my time. Quality and making sure everything works is my first priority when it comes to the mod just a bit of an insight on what's going on... Anyways I noticed some minor errors and mistakes I'm  gonna need to fix soon. Even though they're minor there are a lot of them .All those fixes are going to be released on the next update on Wednesday 05/12/2021. 

05/11/2021

Next update is official and ready. I'm finetuning and organizing everything for the upload tomorrow. Early access includes several text, aspiration and buff fixes as well as more of the whims overhaul and compatibility options with some of VickySims mods.
Starting tomorrow. The changelog will be moved to the Guide, to save up some time and avoid confusions. 

I'll also be working on custom trait compatibility with Woohoo welness, Wonderful whims and All traits from Vickysims first.

05/19/2021

These last days I've been working on the BetterSims Menu. adding options for customization. This is a much needed improvement that will take longer time than I initially planned, but gives me the chance to work on adding references to custom traits while I'm doing that. So, This means 2 things:

The Seasons module will have to be delayed  to June 9 instead of June 2th as I initially intended.
But I won't leave you hanging. The next scheduled Update will be on May 26 and Includes:

• More text fixes.
• Fixes of reported Last Exception Issues.
• Trait picker interactions so you can choose and remove any preference you want for your sim.
• Options to Enable and Disable each system for the active sim or all sims.(this one takes more time than expected)
• Compatibility with VickySims traits.
• Metabolism traits mod addon(This adds integration with Vickysims' mod)

05/21/2021

Hello everyone. I hope you're all doing grat today. The Sims team has dropped a bomb. a really good one. Seems like Likes and Dislikes are finally coming to TS4. Here's a link explaining this leak https://simsvip.com/2021/05/21/the-sims-4-likes-and-dislikes-slot-coming-to-create-a-sim/
This is a feature that will be announced and explained on Tuesday 25. We'll probably get that update quite soon.
But .. What does is mean for BetterSims preferences?

Well I can just imagine and guess right now  how that will work and as soon as we get the update I'll test  and figure a plan keep working.. If the likes-dislikes are not detailed enough what I'll do is expand and integrate my preferences to it. If the likes/dislikes system allows it, I'd like to add more options  or even migrate preferences to likes/dislikes. I still don't know but I see this as a great oportunity to add depth to the game.

05/25/2021

Well Hello everyone! It has been a crazy day today .. Likes and Dislikes coming to TS4 seem to be amazing and really change my plans ... The new Likes and Dislikes system will add so much to the game and I'm excited because it gives me a new system to work in. 

Now what will happen with BetterSims updates?
Well I had an update scheduled for tomorrow with a ton of added content but some of that will have to wait a bit until I have time to play with the new preferences system. I'm gonna have to delete and integrate some of my preferences and see if I can Migrate others to make the experience more cohesive.
Later today I'm uploading a surprise update including the new and Improved BetterSims menu and some other fixes. And the date and features for the next update will have to wait a bit. Because I'm gonna have to work a lot integrating my features into the Likes and Dislikes system.

On friday, after the update comes out I'm gonna do a Livestram on twitch exploring and coming up with ideas about the changes and new things to add to my mod so don't hesitate to join if you're interested. I also want to talk about Hair in TS4 and my plans for the Hair Dyes mod.

05/27/2021

Hello Dear Patreons. How was your day today? Mine was a little crazy and I'm overwhelmingly happy about the last game update. I'm playing with the new stuff and testing. Already came up with some Ideas and wanted to share a little sneak peak of what I have in mind.

Please DO NOT  take this as a confirmation the those things are coming for sure. I have to test and Make sure those are possible  I will anyways make sure I add everything I can. I'm also getting ready for tomorrow's Livestream on twitch  cleaning up my mods folder and some other stuff.. I'd love to talk about my hair dyes as well so that's something elese I'm preparing.

06/08/2021

Hello everyone. This last week has been tough for me in university and at home. I will finish my classes in July 9th  so until then I'll have to work at a slower pace. I am learning blender and other useful tools so it's not bad at all. But now let's talk about next update.

I want to release the first test verion this week. I call it test version because there might be some text and images missing. that's the hardest thing to check for me mostly because it takes a lot of time and for some reason I don't easily see text errors 😅. I'll talk more about test versions and tier changes on another post. please keep an eye on that. This update is a big one mainly because I'm making the mod modular so you can remove any feature you don't want. I'm not adding new preferences yet because I'm focusing on making my system work with the new game preferences. 

Here's a list of what I've done so far:

• Separate the systems from the main module(going through all the filles is very heavy but necessary)
• Fix and remove text troughout the mod (WIP) A lot of text will need to be removed.
• Fixed the shopping cart bug from my get to work module.
• Learned about how likes and dislikes work(I'm including this because even if it doesn't have immediate bennefits it takes time and it's part of the process)
• Make the Zodiac sign addon for Radiophobe's zodiacs.
• Make the Metabolism Addon for  Vickysims metabolism traits.

And Here's a List of the things left to do for this update:

• Finish removing the unnecesary traits and text related to them.
• Add species restrictions to all traits. This was brought to my attention by Vickysims.
• Moving text from to the correspondent packages.
• Finish organizing and making sure everything is in the right place.
• Organize Aspirations. For now I'll have the Vanilla and Lemon version separated but still available because the changes I'll do on aspirations need more time.
• Update and translate the guide. I want to make it right, add pictures and explanations because installing will be different.

06/12/2021

Hello eveeryone I hope you're all doing great. I'm finally testing BetterSims I couldn't do that before because a lot of elements were missing. There are still some things that need work like aspirations  life choices and the species restrictions but I'm getting closer to a stable relase. 

The last Early version 12 will go public tomorrow. It has been over two weeks now. The next early version Will be released on wednesday. After that release I can publish a quick update for any needed fixes this month and then go back to bigger updates.

From the next month on I'll release an update every 20 to 25 days. the versions will go first to Instant access, 8 to 10 days later to Early access and will go public as soon as I publish the next Instant access. I'll do quick fixes when needed(especially for game update related issues) That's how I'll manage updates after the Tier changes.

06/15/2021

Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing great. I have not very good news today. I've been fixing  all the systems and There's not a lot of things left to add back to the mod. While testing I've encountered an issue with the Life choices system. The bug is pretty annoying and I'm having a hard time finding where it lies, there are a ton of files. Because of this, next update will have to be delayed  at least 2 days so I can release a stable version. Again sorry for the trouble.

 07/11/2021

Hello everyone! I hope you re all having a great time. As some of you may know. The next Bettersims release was initially scheduled for tomorrow, 07/12/2021. This date will be delayed because of some personal things. I'm gonna be travelling tomorrow and will be working for 2 months in the USA. This last week was a complete mess because I had to plan everything and do all the arrangements in a very short period of time. One of those arrangements was making sure that I'll be able to keep working on making mods while being there. So I'm very excited about all of this. I'll be recording and sharing my trip and that stuff on tiktok @mdsimss (non sims related)  but that's it for today.
Features for next release are:

• Fixing cooking autonomy. (I modified it  to stop sims from cooking obsesively  but that's not needed anymore)
• Fixing text issues.
• Fix the customization option on the Menu(enabling, disabling choosing and removing traits)
• Fine tune the automatic music and color preferences , sims are getting too many music prefs.
• Transfer fashion and Style preferences to the new system
• Transfer Location Preferences to the new system
• Finetune the automatic preferences system (I'll keep modifying and fixing stuff for some time so if you have feedback please let me know)

You can check the To do list to see more details about releases and the future

As always thanks for your support and patience. Love you all  💜